There will be a historic reunion at the Family Circle Cup of the pioneers of the WTA Tour.

WTA pioneers to reunite at Family Circle Cup

The Charleston event announced "40Love: A Night of Empowerment Celebrating 40 Years of the Family Circle Cup", a reunion of the nine women who started the WTA Tour, including Billie Jean King and Rosie Casals.

Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Hingis and Rennae Stubbs, along with tennis legend Jimmy Connors and Aaron Krickstein will also be part of the event

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Where there is a will, there is a way.Diablo 3 Gold

Oct 27th, 2011 04:51 PM

tenniscrazy84

Re: ~Rennae Stubbs~

Sep 14th, 2011 10:23 PM

tenniscrazy84

Re: ~Rennae Stubbs~

Aug 23rd, 2011 03:24 PM

tenniscrazy84

Re: ~Rennae Stubbs~

Examiner: Playing on the tour you are away from home for great stretches of time. What do you do to relax mentally and physically to stay fresh on the road?

RS: It depends on where you are. I do think it depends on how much you are playing, winning or losing. If you are losing you’re on the practice court a lot in the day.

Examiner: You don’t take a day off when things aren’t going well?

RS: I would need to take a mental day. I have the tendency to churn over losses and need to get away. There are some players who just want to get back out there and practice. It depends on your personality. Some players like to chill out in their room and get on the computer. When I began the tour there wasn’t the computer so I’d read. At a tournament like La Costa I can go surfing. A couple of times I won here and I surfed everyday, or played golf. But not every tour stop is La Costa. If I am in Berlin I can go to see some history or something to get away.

Examiner: Is it fatiguing going out to see the sights while you are traveling?

RS: It is. People don’t realize how draining it is. People assume we are so lucky traveling and seeing the world. To be honest of the great places I’ve been I haven’t really seen the cool parts. A lot of that is because it’s too physically and mentally draining. People ask me what I mean when I say this, but I say, “When you go on vacation and you go to all those sights that day aren’t you tired at night?” When tennis players have to play a match the next day sight seeing is not easy to do. When you are out of a tournament you are on a plane and onto the next event because if you’ve lost early in the tournament you’ve got to pull it together and prepare for the next tournament. If you’ve had a great tournament you’re straight on a plane to the next event and playing within a day. There’s a lot of down time on the tour but not a lot of that can be utilized in ways that most people would when they have time off. It’s more about conserving your energy.

Examiner: Do you plan extra days at some locations so you can have chill time before the next stop?

RS: If depends where you are. If you’re in San Diego you’ll see the players hang around for a day or two. You can’t really plan because you don’t know how you will do. I remember talking with Steffi Graf about this and she said if there’s one thing she wish she had done more of is to have enjoyed her wins, but you don’t have time.

Examiner: The responsibilities.

RS: Yes, the responsibilities. The pressure to do well the following week. When you are doing well there are more demands. You get to the end of the event, you win it, you have that moment where you see players cry they are so happy, you give them a couple of hours of joy and the trophy, you sit around and talk about the week and then it’s bang, straight onto the next week.

Examiner: The slate starts clean.

RS: It’s, “Get over it because you’ve got to play tomorrow at the next event.” It’s constant ups and downs. If you lose you’re upset for three days or you keep thinking about the shots you missed. I can’t tell you how many times at the next practice if I missed a certain ball during a match and I miss it again in practice, deja vu, it’s not fun.
Then you slowly let it go. Then you go onto the next week. It’s a tough cycle.

Examiner: Did you plan down time and go home?

RS: Having down time, getting away from tournaments and focusing on practicing things or working on fitness is as important as winning matches. When you are doing really well it’s as important as ever to give yourself a day or two to not think about tennis and stress. It feels as though you’re tuned in from the first moment of the year of playing to the very end. During the season you don’t feel like you have down time. I always saw the day after the Tour Championships as the day I could breathe without stressing, because I knew I had six weeks before the Australian Open began.

Examiner: Did you ever work with a sport psychologist during your career?

RS: I didn’t. I did when I was at the Institute of Sport in Australia because it was stressed upon us. I think it’s an individual thing. I think it’s really helped some players. I talk to players and friends about how to handle situations. I have found that to be more beneficial to me. For me it was difficult to listen to a sport psychologist when it felt like,
“You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know what it feels like to have break point and not think about the outcome of that”. You can tell me to breathe and do certain things, maybe it’s just my personality. I’m combative. Where if a player says to me, “Listen this is what I did in this moment, this is what benefited me.” Then I think to myself, “Oh I’ll try that.” It’s an individual thing.

Examiner: The tour is unique in that players start it at a very young age and this is the only environment they are immersed in for many years. Then they get outside that and someone can see that a player is strong in certain areas of their lives but outside these boundaries, a lot is missing.

RS: Yes, it’s something the WTA is trying to do to teach more life skills. I don’t think this gets talked about enough. I talk to players about it because you’re in such a microcosm of the world and you’re such a small part of life. You don’t get life skills. Simple things like how do you pay your bills? You get parents looking after the details for you and suddenly you turn 30 and wonder what have I been doing with my life? It’s scary for players that have been on the tour since they were sixteen. Everything is catered to like booking your hotel room the tournaments make it easy for players. On the flip side there are certain things a normal 17 or 18 year old girl can’t fathom what we go through. So it is what it is. But I think life skills aren’t part of the tour. You’re taught everyday to wake up and work hard, practice, hit the ball and everything else will be okay. There are many players I talk to and ask them what they are going to do when they are done playing and they don’t know. Even for someone like me, I’ve always taken an interest in television. I’ve always been quite social and networked yet it’s still scary for me. It’s so different.

Examiner: It’s a transition of who you know yourself to be.

RS: You’re receiving this accolade, you’re hearing people tell you how impressed they are you’re a professional tennis player and it shifts to you’re a normal person again, and that’s hard.

Examiner: That’s interesting because it doesn’t matter what you are doing, you have value as a person. You’ve enjoyed this stage and the highlights of this commitment. You’ve given to tennis through the success of your professional involvement. You’ve demonstrated great competence. You have great resources, connections and people have tremendous respect for you and what you’ve been doing the last twenty years.

RS: It’s always been the plan to think of life after tennis. It’s funny because I’ve thought I’ve always done that really well but to not play professional tennis it’s been the biggest part of my life and not have that any more when it’s time to stop it’s like jumping off a cliff into safety but where? The unknown is always a bit scary for anyone.

Examiner: What has been the transition path from being a competing player to the next stage of your career? You’ve been participating as a t.v. commentator for awhile now.

RS: I started in broadcasting when I was eighteen. A well known Australian broadcaster asked me what I was going to do when I am done playing tennis? I said I would love to work in television.

Examiner: Early on you had an opportunity.

RS: Yes, the broadcaster said, “Well come up to the booth tomorrow.” My first reaction was, “You’re kidding.” He said “Come on do it”. So I did and the first piece I did I was on camera. I remember the match. I remember who played.

Examiner: Was it fun?

RS: Yes, I loved it. I worked the finals of the Australian Open for ESPN in 1997, with Cliff Drysdale when I hurt my wrist. I worked a bit with Pam Shriver during Fed Cup and we did Chicago together. This was when they were a little less professional about tennis. Now they’ve got their team and I’m just trying to slowly fit into that team. I work a lot for Australian t.v. now and have sporadic work with the Tennis Channel.

Examiner: Has the transition been easy or a steep learning curve?

RS: It’s a process because I am still competing professionally on the tour part-time. I still play team tennis.

Examiner: You can’t drop right off the cliff.

RS: Some player’s like Steffi, she was completely done. She just stopped cold turkey.

Examiner: She had Andre (Agassi). It wasn’t like she was walking into a total void.

RS: That’s very true. I think that’s very important. I think people say well you shouldn’t stop playing because of someone else or stop because you don’t want to travel anymore but sometimes that's a big reason to stop. Even for me settling down and not wanting to be on the road all the time. But we’ll see what happens. It’s part of the learning curve.

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